Aldo reads Marvel NOW! (even though you are, and he clearly hasn't learned his lesson)

no, the character came into it when Todd bought Eclipse's assests and then OFFERED to swap him Marvelman for his interest in Spawn characters. he agreed, then Todd continued to never pay him anything, and also didn't send him anything indicating that Todd actually owned even the slightest fragment of Marvelman. hence another 16 years of legal nonsense.

Ok, I'll rephrase what I said. NG was prepared to swap it for Marvelman. Does that make my point clearer? And yes, we all know Todd didn't actually have the rights he tried to sell in the end. Did you see the part where I said he was a dick?

royalties due to creating characters, and Todd only took the issues out of the TPBs and stopped making multiple action figures of all three ONCE Gaiman asked for his royalties.

Like is said then, about royalties.

he's editing dialogue in one issue AFAIK, not writing a series

Really? Wow. Then it's completely fucking crazy that Marvel are making any press out of it at all, and more than heavily implies that bringing it in was all Marvel's idea. I guess that means there are two main possible explanations for Angela appearing:

It was all Neil's idea

Given he did Marvel 1602 for free just to fundraise so Marvel could beat down Todd, I can't see why he would have the idea of giving Todd money unless its part of some conspiracy to get Marvel to pay him royalties and undermine their position. This only really makes sense if he obtained Todd's rights after the legal thing was over.

It was all Marvel's idea

Joe Quesada woke up one day and thought "I love that awesome character that appeared in 5 issues of another company's comic 20years ago, I should put the character in the MU". That's batshit.

Gaiman is sole owner of Angela.

character makes no sense outside of spawn, unless they throw it in with all the marvel supernatural crap, which could work but that is currently getting some play in x-factor

yeah but X-Factor is ending so that will have to move somewhere if they're going to keep using it

wait, what? they're canning x-factor?

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/04/28/x-factor-is-cancelled-official/

EZ that's what I thought must have happened, which means NG has got Todd's rights after the last court case.

Angela is going to be in Guardians of the Galaxy to start with, which is the book NG is working on.

maybe they'll put her in the movie

okay, putting angela in Guardians makes me feel it's super likely she's a movie character since they're focused on that film

c'mon man this is psycho, Marvel don't pay royalties on books and got summary judgments against Kirby's grandkids the week the Captain America movie came out. what world do you think you're living in?

Image takes a flat fee on every book it publishes.

Ok, so A Ewing's second Avengers Assemble is also VERY GOOD

Bright future that kid etc

AU started off promisingly, but #8 took it way off the rails imo.

― What makes a man start threads? (WilliamC), Thursday, May 16, 2013 3:22 PM (2 weeks ago)

yeah after that one I was basically thinking to myself "why am I reading this again"

― AMERICA IS ABOUT RESSLING (DJP), Thursday, May 16, 2013 3:27 PM (2 weeks ago)

Damn if Bendis didn't steer it back towards sensibility. I'm not a fan of Peterson or Pacheco, though.

Okay Mighty Avengers looks like it will be THE SHIT

thank u based Al

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=45933

Monica Rambeau
She-Hulk
White Tiger
Luke Cage
Power Man
Otto-Man
Falcon
Ronin
Blue Marvel

yes I'm buying this

nice to see Ms. Rambeau back

so the Otto-Man thing stuck huh? i kinda thought that would've been reversed by now

Really wish it wasn't Greg Land, but Al's Avengers Assemble issues were great.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/4eb4350bb02eb0e8117d42b181fb4e05/tumblr_mo16vd5VQL1qznhs5o1_500.jpg

It's possible that this won't rule. But it's not _very_ possible.

There are so many great Avengers/Avengers-affiliated books out right now, it's crazy

Might end up in the pub with Al this evening - will endeavour to convince him to cover Greg Land's art with as many dialogue boxes as possible. The Marvel Method works!

Make it so.

So, the indicia of AoU #10 says Marvel owns Angela lock, stock and barrel now. I guess that sorts out the debate above over whether .NG bought out Todd, which he must have done if he's sold it on. (Other option is that .NG sold his shares to Marvel leaving Todd in a 'name your price' position, which would constitute a bit of a fuck you to NG given how long he spent in court)

maybe he sold the character to them as some kind of consolation considering how the whole Marvelman thing faded out. i could see him just wanting to completely forget the whole thing at this point, or maybe he figures it'll be a huge pain in the ass for Todd to fight Marvel on it

So, the indicia of AoU #10 says Marvel owns Angela lock, stock and barrel now. I guess that sorts out the debate above over whether .NG bought out Todd, which he must have done if he's sold it on.

Seems far more likely that he was given the character as post-bankruptcy settlement.

maybe he sold the character to them as some kind of consolation considering how the whole Marvelman thing faded out.

it's unsettling to see a successful creator flogging a character to Marvel at all. but the idea he'd have to console them is weird - if Marvel aren't happy with ongoing sales on the 1602 collection, it's their problem for neither marketing nor keeping in print their collected editions. or if they're not happy with the sales on their Marvelman books, they shouldn't have paid a weegie wideboy for the rights (either 1 pound or the rumoured high amounts) nor published material nobody in the marketplace was interested in. and Gaiman already wrote The Eternals AS "thanks" for the royalties on the 1602 floppies!

oh yeah, i totally forgot about that book

you guys, Hawkeye #11

holy shit

I mean seriously, this may be the best single issue comic book I've read in years; the last time I had this strong a positive reaction to a book was We3 (which, given the POV of Hawkeye #11, is a big lol)

PIZZA DOG

http://kibblesmith.tumblr.com/post/53934553463/lyrics-by-mckelvie-sorry-it-took-so-long-i-had

I haven't read a single comic in about 5 weeks. This no internet and away from LCS thing is killing me.

I really love the way perspectives are used in this series; it sometimes feels like lazy storytelling when a book does the whole "here's what happened from so-and-so's perspective" but Fraction's decision to use the perspective overlap to anchor parts of the story together in terms of timeline and character motivation (this is the third time we've seen that confrontation between Clint and Kate, right?) and to expand the web of the story (the way the Clown was brought in).

Yup. Hawkeye #11. Insane.

So did people read Infinity? In the end, I really liked it. The conflicts were all sorta handwaved away, but that is still better than the fistfights normally thrown. And it was just constantly half mythically grand and half insanely batshit, and the structure was just weird. In the end, most of the Builders storyline was in Avengers while Thanos was in New Avengers, except that the whole point of the Builders agression was explained in this one issue of New Avengers which was a weird interlude from everything.

I need to reread it in a sitting or two to really understand what the hell went on. The Black Swan coda really irritated me -- "Oh you think you had it tough with the Bogeymen? Wait til the Double Bogeymen get hold of you! Or the Triple Bogeymen!" Enough to make me want to give up golf.

I have no idea what you guys are talking about, but it sounds hilarious.

I loved that Black Swan coda! Every event ever has been like that - see Trinity War for the worst - at least this time there was some explanation that sorta made sense. The Builders haven't been powerful since the destruction of the Superflow between universes, so wait til you see The Mapmakers!!! Also, made up languages...

It just felt like a cynical lead-in to some future Marvel Crossover Event™, which I've sort of reached my limit for...

http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m39jofPaY01qec398o1_400.gif

But to me it felt natural, and in keeping with the feeling of hopeless despair from New Avengers. It wasn't the usual nonsensical twist.

Signed up for Marvel Unlimited and have been using my dad's ipad as a reader whilst visiting this week. I like this a lot, and its saving a great deal in trades of issues I'd want to read but not necessary own.

It does make me want to pick up the Steranko collection for real, tho.

I like Hickman, but I've found Infinity really difficult to follow even by his usual standards - not the narrative as a whole, which is basically just Space Invaders, but the individual scenes, which don't carry much as they're so choppy and confusing and self-consciously epic. Also the characters are a bit dull -- the New Avengers story storyline is just as bitty, but the characters are much more compelling.

I wonder why he bothered making Cannonball and Sunspot Avengers if he was hardly ever going to do anything with them. I guess maybe the thing with Smasher is supposed to go somewhere at a later point?

It would be interesting to see the younger/newer Avengers have their own spotlight adventure as opposed to being fill-in characters for Avengers standbys; Manifold and Smasher have gotten some of this and I'd like to see more of it with Sunspot, Cannonball, Starbrand, Nightmask, etc. Also the thing I'm unsure of at the end of Infinity is are Captain Universe, Abyss and Ex Nihilo sticking around?

Hickman's more complex narratives are usually pretty hard to follow unless you read it all in one go, then they end up being pretty sweet. Pretty much the antithesis of a self-contained single-issue writer.

Did they resolve that multiple worlds colliding into each other thingy? I either missed that or didn't read the right issues.

I'm going to drop in a recommendation for Secret Warriors right here again, though.

Yeah, my frustration with Hickman only really started when I caught up with all the back issues and started reading him month-to-month. But I still think the character work is pretty uninvolving compared to FF.

That's something of a necessary side-effect of dealing with 20 characters as opposed to 8, I think

Avengers Arena just ended and I enjoyed it a lot; Hopeless introduced some really great characters in this thing and added a behind-the-scenes coda in the letters column that reveals that the entire concept was supposed to be standalone story arc in the teenage superhero soap opera he originally wanted to write but the editors honed in on it and said "we'll greenlight a series about this"

Have read through the second trade of Avengers Arena. Grateful that I'm reading library trades. Had the same "ARGH!" reaction to Nico's death/rebirth that I did to Ultimate Gwen Stacy's death/rebirth, so glad that that was solved within the same book. On the plus side, not overreacting in the short term reinforces the 'go along for the ride' feeling I have enjoying Superior Spider-Man.

Now to wait for the third AA trade and see how that plays out against the characters announced for Avengers Undercover, and what happens to those who weren't listed as AU cast.

"the New Avengers story storyline is just as bitty, but the characters are much more compelling."

I started wondering at times when you read comics is some of this characterization really just a similar effect of "acted stardom" in that you know other stories with the characters so your mind automatically compares it back to earlier comics. Say just in how cool Black Panther might be drawn, even if he doesn't say anything, your knowledge of earlier stories fills in a blank in your head.

Eh, I finished Infinity and didn't think much of it in the end. A bit too punchy. Meet the new end-of-level-boss, same as the old, etc.

I am a late convert to Avengers Arena though.

I think I'll give Avengers a miss for six months then catch up and binge. Seems the best way to do Hickman.

Hickman's FF run was the most enjoyable superhero run I've read for many, many years. Thought he really brought the best parts of the FF to the fore. Cosmic adventurers, grounded by being a loving family. Redeemed the misuse of Reed Richards in Civil War, for me at least.

What did people think of Fraction's Inhumanity? I thought it was pretty clever of him to use two characters he'd been writing recently (Hawkeye, Medusa) as sounding boards to lay out the framework; I have always been much more mutant-focused up until the past 2 years or so so I have no idea if the direction the story took was supposed to be "SHOCKING" or not.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ba52FRmIUAAZ-Aa.jpg

armor up.
be angry.
POSSESS THE POWER
your attack plan.